


Evitar (The Uncertainty / Local Inversion Mix)

by drew



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-07-01
Updated: 2003-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:08:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drew/pseuds/drew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The future isn't quite so bleak as Draco thinks.</p><p>(original story "Evitar" by Melle; no longer linkable)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evitar (The Uncertainty / Local Inversion Mix)

> > _a long time from now_

Draco hated traffic. Hated it with a passion. He stood in what he suspected was the most congested city in the world and pulled his windbreaker tighter around himself. Seven years ago the famous Harry Potter had been spotted here, and Draco was beginning to loathe his self-initiated quest to find the Boy Wonder. No one had told him to, but he wondered.

"I wonder what the chances are of us meeting here right now."

Draco whirled to see a man standing behind him, tallish and angular, with a day's stubble and a scar running right down the center of his forehead. Harry Potter. Aside from outgrowing Draco, Harry hadn't changed much; his build was still slight, his hair still dark and unmanageable. Draco's mouth opened and closed a few times.

"Makes you look like a fish. Give it a rest. Anyway, what brings you to New York on this blustery day?"

"Trying to track you, actually. It's harder than you think to find a wizard who's been missing for thirteen years. They don't exactly put up road signs saying 'This Way To The Boy Who Killed Voldemort'."

Harry laughed, a short bitter laugh. "I should hope not. Nobody would want to see me."

"That's not-"

"It _is_ true, Malfoy. But I can let it go for now. I suppose you'd like to see where I've been vacationing?"

"Bloody long time for a vacation, isn't it?"

"Well, you can never be _too_ relaxed. But perhaps you're right. Regardless..." He trailed off, removed a set of keys from his pocket, and unlocked the brownstone Draco had been standing in front of.

"Holy hell, Potter. Who'd you kill to buy this place?"

Harry didn't smile. "One of the benefits of being a kid with dead rich parents."

"Sorry."

"Since when have _you_ been sorry about anything? Don't worry about it. Besides, I'm going to lock you in the basement anyway. Or is it supposed to be the attic? I can't remember. Either way, I'm supposed to capture you so you can't tell people I'm living here, right?" His eyes flashed for a second, and then he turned to go into the kitchen. "Tea?"

"Please. Apparating from Cairo is hell on the senses. How'd you manage it, anyway?"

"If I told you, I'd lose my ability to run away whenever I felt like it. But I will say that I didn't go right from Cairo to New York. There were several jumps in between. But somehow you managed to link the two. I must say, I'm rather impressed."

"I'm impressed that you've been here under everybody's nose for this long. In a city of this many wizards?"

"Not as hard as you'd think. I gave up most magic." He lifted the kettle off the stove's burner and poured steaming water into a mug, which he passed to Draco. "Anyway, I'm not going to lock you up or whatever."

"I could go right to the _Daily Prophet_."

"So?"

"So, you've been in hiding for _years_. I'd want to stop people from revealing my location, if I were you."

"Since when do you and I do the same things?"

* * *

> > _a year or two pre-present_

"Dammit, Malfoy, you can't tell him now!"

"Fuck off, Weasley. He's the only one who can do _anything_, and he'll kill _you_ if he finds out later that you stopped him from doing something."

Ron looked to Hermione to back him up. She just shook her head a little and lowered it. Ron glared at Draco's back as he walked toward the door to where Harry was asleep.

Draco opened the door and stepped through, shutting it behind himself. His breath caught momentarily as he saw Harry just lying there, bruised and dirty, on Ron and Hermione's rumpled bed. As Draco approached, Harry stirred, cracking one eye at the intrusion.

"What now?"

Draco sighed. "Sorry for yet another thing, but you need to tell people something. They're a little... crazy. It's mad Death Eater hysteria, and we can't stop it. Anyone and everyone with Dark ties in any generation, however far back, is being basically led to slaughter. Something has to be done, and I'm almost positive you're the only one who can do it."

Harry coughed and looked more frail than Draco had ever seen, despite clutching his wand with a strength not many possessed. "When?"

"Now."

And Harry went off to save the world from itself for the second time that day.

* * *

> > _back to the future_

Harry took Draco's suitcase up the stairs to the second floor, where a guest room had been tastefully decorated in white with red and yellow accents. Draco took notice. "Can't leave the school even after thirteen years. Amazing."

"Yeah, well, I saw you with the green and silver watch. Don't play coy, Malfoy, we're still from opposite houses. And you of all people should know it still _matters_."

Draco nodded slightly. Harry continued, "there's a girl who comes around twice a week to clean, and to cook dinner, so I'm not eating out all the damn time. Don't try anything with her. She's a ghetto girl and she'll kick your ass. Or maybe get one of her brothers to gut you with a switchblade. So, you know, don't."

"My days of seducing innocent maidens are over, I'm afraid."

"Pity. You used to be so good at it." There was a twinge in Harry's voice, and Draco knew it was sarcasm, but it was mixed with... something. He couldn't pick it out.

There was a semi-comfortable pause. Draco felt Harry looking at him, even though he was busy with moving things around the room. Draco spoke. "What?"

"What what?"

"What's going through your head?"

"When did you become a thirty-year-old man?"

Draco snorted. "About the same time you did, if memory serves me. People do that, you know. Age. Some even grow up."

* * *

> > _present day_

"Why'd he go?" It was the most indirect question Ron had ever posed to Draco, but Draco knew what was being asked. He'd been dreading this question for weeks.

"I really don't know, Ron. I probably would have done it too, though. He just wants out, but I don't know if he knows what that means. I sure as hell don't."

"You knew him best." It was an accusation.

"Yeah, well, hate me later. Comes from working so closely together, I guess. Doesn't mean you're a bad person, if that's what you're thinking."

"I just. Never mind." Ron looked back at the Ministry documents he was examining. "There's so many of these. We'll never finish them in time."

"Your mind isn't on it."

"Of course not," Ron snapped. A pause. "Hermione's pregnant." Draco's eyebrows went up.

* * *

> > _in the future_

Draco picked at his food. He'd enjoyed a long hot shower, the fluffiest towel in weeks, and a solid three-hour nap before this inevitable dinner. Harry looked easily five years, maybe ten years older than his real age, and Draco wondered what had caused that. Other than the obvious. Was it easy to kill a person? Even someone or something as evil as Voldemort? He knew his father had. Killing was simply a way of politics for the wealthy. He made a decision.

"You left."

"Very observant, Malfoy. You must be a Ministry employee." Under Arthur Weasley, the Ministry had grown in respect and was now a much better place to work, but Harry didn't know that.

"You twit. I meant would you ever come back? You've been here a while."

Harry chewed and considered this. Draco pressed on. "I mean, come on. You called it a vacation and nobody's heard from you since. That's not exactly normal. Plus, I've been here two days and you still haven't asked about Hermione's... oh, wait, you probably don't know about..." He trailed off. "Damn, I don't know where to begin! You missed a hell of a lot in the past thirteen years."

"You were going to say 'child', weren't you? Hermione got pregnant. Boy or a girl?" Harry seemed genuinely interested.

"_Now_ he seems interested." Draco grumbled. "A girl. I stood in as her godfather, Harry, because you weren't there to do it. You know they would have asked you. But nobody's heard a peep from you, so people have been thinking all kinds of things."

"Let them." Harry paused and sighed. "So the one thing that's kept me guessing for all this time is a question. And I figure that since I've been gone so long, you owe me an answer."

"Don't you think it's more the other way around?"

"No."

Draco rolled his eyes. "Anything that'll get you to talk, I guess. Shoot."

"Why'd you do it? Not the godfather thing; I know why you did that. But why'd you work with us in the first place?"

"I don't know that you're allowed to ask that question."

"Well I did. And you said you'd answer, so let's hear it."

* * *

> > _just pre-present_

Azkaban was not a fun place. To say that it was unhappy would be the understatement of the century. Simply put, it was depressing. Gray stone walls. Metal bars and gates. A moat. A fortress, covered in moss and filled with the screams of the Evil. Draco shivered. He was here for one reason, and one reason only. Ron stood with him at the gates and signed him through, a benefit of being the child of a high-ranking Ministry official.

"You know you can back out. Don't go down there, Malfoy. Please? It's full of the worst stuff ever," Ron finished lamely.

Draco looked up at him, almost a foot taller with a shock of red hair and freckles all over the place. "You're afraid I'll go down there and want to stay? Weasley, drop it. _Nobody_ wants to be in Azkaban, least of all the Death Eaters. Trust me on this one. I'm coming back. And I'm not going to be some changed psycho."

"Well, better the psycho that we know, eh?" Ron teased gently.

Draco rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Just let me see my father."

The guard at the outer door opened it and led Draco through several winding passageways and at least a dozen more doors, each with a more complicated lock than the previous one. At the last door, which wasn't even so much a door as a solid stone wall, the guard handed Draco a pouch. "Two pinches of powder," he said. "One to get in, one to get out. We see anybody else come through here, and it's life for both of you."

Draco nodded and took the pouch from the guard's outstretched hand. He opened it and saw two meager pinches of powder. Taking half, he threw it at the wall, which seemed to melt away. As soon as he'd stepped through, though, the stone was back, and felt even more solid than before. He put the remainder of the powder in his pocket and prayed it wouldn't spill out.

Death Eaters lined the walls of this wing of the prison, shouting out mutinous words to the boy who'd landed them all there. Barely eighteen, and he had an Azkaban rating almost as high as Alastor Moody's. The word that burned his flesh was "traitor", shouted from almost every cell, the cells of former friends and neighbors, of quidditch teammates and fathers of classmates.

When he reached his father's cell, Draco found him standing near the bars. "You wanted to see me, father?" Draco said, trying to sound as bland as possible and failing miserably.

"Did you know the Muggles have writers to match our own?" Lucius seemed to think it was lecture time. "A great many brilliant writers, denied magic by their families, but not denied genius. Such waste. They would have been among the finest wizards. There is a playwright, a man called Sophocles, who lived some thousands of years ago."

Draco sighed. It would be some time before his father got to the point.

Lucius continued. "Sophocles wrote about the great family of Oedipus, of whom you may have heard. Probably not, if that crotchety old fool Dumbledore is still in charge at that school of yours. Sophocles also wrote about a family in which there were two brothers. These brothers fought on opposite sides of a war, and one was on the losing side, naturally." Here he looked around his cell as if for the first time. "His sister was a girl named Antigone, and she refused to obey the custom of leaving the losers for the vultures. She reasoned that this boy was her brother, and he deserved a decent burial. She buried him and was killed for that."

Lucius looked up at Draco and his gaze pierced the boy, holding him stationary. "What does that teach you, Draco?"

"That honoring family commitments can get you killed," Draco replied.

"Wrong, as usual. I hear you're still using my name."

"It's mine, too."

Lucius shook his head. "Again, wrong. You used to be twenty times the Malfoy you are today. You could lead the Lord's army-"

"And my knee would always be bent to him. I don't kneel."

"With one exception, apparently." Lucius's voice could have frozen fire.

"As long as he doesn't demand. Goodbye, father."

Draco left slowly, letting the ice drain away.

* * *

> > _future_

"Well it's been fun having you around, but I've got to get back to my day job." Harry seemed itching to be rid of Draco.

"I didn't know you held a job. Thought those rich dead parents paid for everything."

"They weren't quite _that_ rich. And even if they had been, I'd have been bored. I manage a bookstore up the street. It keeps me out of trouble and in reading material. I couldn't stomach anything practical after the practicality of what I had to do."

"You written anything?"

"What, you mean like memoirs?" Harry laughed, and then saw Draco's expression. "You're serious. Who'd read them?"

"You said people just wanted a story, didn't you? So write them your story. Hell, you'd make the money to stop your bookstore work, unless you really like it, and even then you can retire to the back room or something."

"But they'd want interviews and all that newspaper crap. That would be something: 'Harry Potter, backroom boy'. I can see the headlines now. Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather be an unknown hero than known by the wizarding world at this point."

* * *

> > _after before_

"What?"

"I told you. I'm going. Vacationing, really. I just have to get away from these _people_."

Draco looked at Harry like he'd grown another head. "You can't just leave! The real work is beginning _now_. We've got to take charge while we can, put things back where they belong."

"You all should do that. I'm done. I killed him, it's over for me. Besides, they don't want to see me, they want to see my face smiling on the front page of the _Prophet_. I'm just a story. An important one, but just a story. I can't live with that." Harry hefted the bag he held in one hand, his broomstick tucked under his arm.

Draco got quiet for a minute. Harry shifted from foot to foot, never finding the right place to put his weight. Draco sighed. "You're right, of course. You can leave. Leave the rest of us to the trial that awaits -- hundreds of Death Eaters to be put in Azkaban, families to rebuild, a whole fucking Ministry to get out of 'kill' mode. We can do that. But you did your part."

"The Dark Arts we learned... I feel it like it's pressing on me. I need to get away from magic for a while, live like a Muggle. We're the only two outside Azkaban with Dark Arts training, and that only by necessity. And it's still heavy. I know you feel it, unless you've just been under it your whole life. But I'm going because I've got to."

"Yes, well. People aren't exactly going to reverse their opinion of you, but if you need to go, then go." He paused. "If you think it will help," he added, dubiously.

"Please don't try to find me. Please?"

Draco's eyes, red-rimmed from lack of sleep, assented. That was enough for Harry.

* * *

> > _a few years ago_

"I had to raid home to get this; it had better be what we need." Draco lifted an enormous volume from his bag and placed it warily on the desk. It practically sucked light out of the air around it.

"Well it's definitely Dark enough. Let's see what it's got in it. We'll need the most powerful stuff-" Harry reached for the book, but Draco smacked his hand away.

"Watch it. This is my father's, remember? He's the most paranoid man I know. Let's see..." Draco bit his lip and Harry could see blood, a tiny trickle running down from the corner of Draco's mouth over his clean-shaven chin. A drop fell, and as Harry watched in amazement, it hovered in the air about two inches over the book. Draco stuck his finger on the droplet and said a single word. The book flipped open, and the blood vanished.

"What the hell was that?"

"Protective charm. One of the oldest and most powerful spells in existence. Especially good for family secrets, as it requires a family member to undo. But that's not what we're looking for. I think I'm going to have to turn pages. Seems only a Malfoy can mess with _this_ book. Not even You-Know-Who himself could touch it."

"You sure come from a loving family," Harry muttered.

"Yeah, well. Takes one to know one, eh Potter?" Malfoy scrunched up his face and said "wait, that was low. I'm sorry." And immediately winced at how soft he'd become. He was supposed to be on Potter's side, not wrapped around his little finger.

* * *

> > _the optimistic future_

"So you're staying?"

"If that's alright."

"Any kind of itinerary?"

"Not really. Maybe just here."

"Oh."

There was a comfortable pause. Most things between the two of them had become comfortable recently; for the better, Draco thought. "Of course, eventually I'll go back," he said, slowly, and waited for the answer he knew was coming.

It didn't. "Then maybe I'll go back with you." The corners of Draco's mouth turned up.


End file.
